they know they have the moral high ground because they're stomping on people's faces

[kindkit]

Today is the Trans Day of Remembrance, and it seems to have brought all the TERFs* out on social media. Because apparently it's less important to remember murdered trans people and call attention to the problem of anti-trans violence than it is to remind everybody that those dead people had ideologically incorrect gender identities.

Even if the TERFs were right about trans people (and they're not, and they know it because they keep telling lies) it would still be a disgusting thing to do.

I guess I should be happy that the Guardian didn't have the gall to print anything by one of its many TERFs today?


*(It's not only the TERFs, it's other transphobic assholes as well. But it's the TERFs who depress me particularly, in part because they keep getting published in the Guardian as though their hateful opinions represent some kind of progressivism.)

Comments

[mecurtin]

I finally encountered a TERF in the wild, saying:

Trans women are males. They do not bear children, breastfeed, hail from a divine feminine, house a sacred passage, sacrifice blood, sync w phases, flow in flux w universe.
They just want the superficial benefits of a social construct but don’t bear the stripes.

I mean, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!? I have the persistent feeling that these are trolls coming from some secret reddit group or something.

I recall running into this sort of thing (on Twitter I called it "mystical-femme-woo") from the late 60s & early 70s, generally along with finger-painting with menstrual blood.

I thought it went away with LSD & psilocybin. Where is this COMING FROM in this day & age?!? And how are people buying it when psychedelics are out of style?

[lilacsigil]

Some of the TERFs (the ones who write in the Guardian in particular) are from that generation, and I used to think that this particular form of transphobia would die out eventually. Unfortunately, they've got a whole new generation hooked on it as a particular brand of identity politics, which is just vile. They also tend to be racist and disablist as well.

[mecurtin]

Who is it, in the Guardian? Nothing pops out on a skim.

[kindkit]

The one I've read most recently is Catherine Bennett, who wrote Bullies Everywhere Take Delight In Coming Up With New Insults. She claims that "terf" (she doesn't capitalize it, presumably to hide the fact that it is an acronym that concisely summarizes a philosophy) and "transphobe" are slurs and that trans people are bullies who want to silence (a) women, (b) free speech and open debate, and (c) common sense.

It's about the 10th repetition I've seen recently of the same damn lies, and part of the reason I found it so disheartening is that it feels like there's an active campaign of hate against trans people (especially trans women) coming from both the right and the ostensible left. Which is not just my paranoia, as TERFs and the religious right have been allying recently to oppose trans people's rights.

[mecurtin]

...
I saw the headline and just ASSUMED that was about bullying OF transkids.

Silly me.

[lilacsigil]

Sheila Jeffreys for one! Julie Bindel, Julia Long, Hadley Freeman. Claire Heuchan defends a lot of TERFs without ever coming out and giving her own opinion (this is actually pretty common - attacks on people who call TERFs TERFs in articles on feminism that are nothing to do with trans people.)

[kindkit]

Sometimes I wonder if these people pay attention to what they're saying. How do they not realize that "terf is a slur" is exactly the same logic as "racist is a slur, and therefore you calling me out on my racism is worse than anything I said or did." For that matter, how do they not realize that posting anti-trans comments on the Trans Day of Remembrance is not entirely unlike the homophobes who picketed Matthew Shepherd's funeral to say that god hates fags? God hates fags and the goddess hates trans people, apparently.

[lilacsigil]

I think it's exactly the same: "I'm a good person, how dare you accuse me of being X". Maintaining the speaker's sanctimony and standing is more important than actually thinking about their behaviour, which says something about how much they value trans or non-white people, respectively. It seems to happen a lot with people who were radicals at one stage of their lives (or still are in one aspect of their lives), or even people who consider themselves marginally more enlightened than their neighbours.

[sovay]

It seems to happen a lot with people who were radicals at one stage of their lives (or still are in one aspect of their lives), or even people who consider themselves marginally more enlightened than their neighbours.

I'm sorry, this is where my brain starts playing Phil Ochs.

"Sure, once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
Ah, but I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal!"

[mecurtin]

jkc, that's a lot. Some powerful editor there is a TERF.

[kindkit]

I haven't encountered that particular brand of woo recently. Though it does call up unpleasant memories of things I read in the eighties (not specifically transphobic things, just supposedly feminist things) that set back my self-understanding by decades by telling me that if I didn't feel comfortable with a female identity, it was just internalized patriarchy.

Most of the stuff I've seen has been more along the lines of "trans women are REALLY men, and therefore the only reason they would want to be among women is to rape them." I have literally read an article that segued from Harvey Weinstein to "this is why we need trans-exclusive women only spaces!" As though it's trans women and not cis men who are the vast, vast majority of the problem.

[sovay]

They do not bear children, breastfeed, hail from a divine feminine, house a sacred passage, sacrifice blood, sync w phases, flow in flux w universe.

This is one of my favorite responses to that kind of gender-essentialist moony nonsense: Jack H. Marr, "Lunectomy."

[lilacsigil]

I'm sorry you have to put up with this shit, today of all days.

[kindkit]

Well, for my own mental health I should have known better than to read the comments to Twitter and Tumblr posts. *sigh*

And, thanks.

[rydra_wong]

Seconded, vehemently.

(And fuck, why do the Guardian have to be so persistently shitty about this, why.)